hi william
first off recompile only if you know what are you doing
you can work with the template also without flash
when you create a new gallery, and you did it correctly, you have to go to left menu, select you gallery under edit gallery and click edit
then you can select a category here (two are for sample)
click edit
in the next screen you must:
change the category name
upload pictures or thumbnails (you need to create thumbs manually (100x70)
after upload click add a new item and select the picture you have uploaded
in the help file you can find all infos about this
cheers
marco